Serendipity
by Mirus Infidus
Summary: "Contrary to what I assume is popular belief, Mello and I weren't exactly 'BFFs' back in Wammy's House." The odd yet true story of how Matt's and Mello's friendship really began. I don't want to give anything away, but it is rather... abnormal. Not yaoi.
1. Chapter 1

Contrary to what I assume is popular belief, Mello and I weren't exactly "BFFs" back in Wammy's House. Hell, I doubt I even said more than eight words to him the entire time we were there together. And those eight words were: "Hey, I'm Matt." and "You're stepping on the cord." Yes, I knew who Mello was and was aware of him (I was third in line to succeed L. How could I not have known who was second?), but that's really about as far as our relationship went back in the House. I could probably have had more of a relationship with him if I had tried to surpass him. But I didn't really care enough to do that.

No, Mello and I did not become close friends until long after he had left the House. Looking back, it all was serendipity how we became friends, I suppose. And pure luck that I survived it at all.

I have no idea where to begin this story because, frankly, it could have about a thousand different beginnings. Normally, I like to follow the King's orders from _Alice's Adventures in Wonderful_ ("'Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'"), but seeing as how there is no clear beginning, I have no choice but to disregard these orders and start from the point in time I believe to hold the most relevance to what follows while not leaving out too much.

So.

I had arrived in America sometime around the twenty-first of August last year, 2009. Why go to America? Well, if you want to know the honest-to-God truth, it's because of the accents. Having grown up in Australia until I was eight, I had developed the Australian accent that everyone around me spoke with. When I was sent to England, I was amazed to hear people speaking with an English accent almost everywhere. Then, living in Wammy's House where many people come from non-English speaking countries and thus have unusual accents when they speak English, I grew fascinated by accents. Accents were a part of my life. When I finally left Wammy's House and was free to go wherever I chose, I decided that I would go someplace where the people are claimed to have generally no accent. This would be one of the most amazing ways of speaking I had ever heard: one in which every word is said as if by a machine, without an accent.

Anyway, there's my little background story. Let's go back to the point, though: I came to the United States of America in late August in the year 2009. Specifically, I went to Los Angeles, in the sunny state of California (at least the impression I got from the postcards I'd seen). Bells probably started ringing in your head when you read the words "Los Angeles." That's perfect. If a little alert didn't go off in your brain, then please note the following: it was in this city that I met Mello again, and in this city that he and I became _amigos_.

Los Angeles was a city unlike any I had ever seen. Or maybe that's just what I told myself. Even at night, even in the back alleys where all the shady characters hang around, the city seemed sunny. The rain was sunny. Funerals were sunny. When I put the blankets over my head at night, it was still sunny. Everything looked artistic, too. That may be because of all the colorful graffiti, but do the reasons really matter? And everything seemed so... big. Even before the "little incident."

The first matter that needed to be taken care of when I set foot on American soil (well, technically concrete) was finding a place to stay. I wanted to be in Los Angeles for a while, so a motel wouldn't cut it. I had 500 Great Britain pounds with me, which, when exchanged for American dollars at the airport, gave me a lump sum of about 760 dollars. Not bad, but not really enough to live off of for very long. Luckily (sort of), I managed to find an old woman who was renting out her downstairs bedroom. The rent was only 190 dollars per month, so naturally I jumped on that deal.

The woman, who insisted that I call her Benta, though I later discovered that her real name was Sue, must have wanted to run a bed-and-breakfast but never got around to it, because she knocked on my door at eight in morning on my first day there and told me that breakfast would be served in fifteen minutes. She did that every day. If I actually had to go somewhere in the morning, like a job, this would have been great because I wouldn't have needed an alarm clock. Her cooking, though, wasn't so great. Out of fear that I would be evicted if I told her this, though, I always joined her in breakfast and pretended to enjoy it.

After I had been living there for about a week, I decided it would be polite to engage Benta in conversation during breakfast. This was probably not the best idea.

"I appreciate your making breakfast, Benta," I casually and politely began.

"Bah! I have to! I know you're not making any money, and you would starve to death if I did not do this. I can't be having dead tenants, you know," she replied. Her tone made it evident that she was not trying to be funny.

"I still have the money to pay you," I retorted, "so it's not like I'm going to go broke and you'll be out a tenant or anything."

"Yes, but you still need more money. How long have you been wearing those clothes? Are you so strapped for cash that quarters for the laundromat are hard to come by?"

I looked down at my clothes. Okay, it was true, I hadn't changed my clothes since moving in. I might have been starting to smell a little. But still, I wasn't going to admit this and let Benta lecture me like a mother. "I change my clothes regularly. And actually, I have a job interview today."

"You do?" the skeptical Benta asked. "How? You never leave that room except for breakfast."

"I found it on the Internet." This phrase can be used in any situation. In fact... no, I shouldn't get off subject. Back to the conversation.

The old woman must have a little fuzzy on the whole Internet concept, so she didn't try to contradict what I said. That doesn't mean she was done trying to put me down: "What time is your interview, hm? Shall you be going in _those_ clothes? Where are you applying, the city dump? You need to wear something _nice_ to a job interview, you know."

"I will be fine. Don't worry about my interview." I was starting to actually believe my interview lie myself.

"I must worry! If you have no money, I get no rent from you, and then I cannot spend it."

"Don't worry," I repeated, then I got up and pushed my chair in. "Thanks for the food, Benta." My plate was still half-covered in various breakfast items. "I need to go prepare for my interview, though." I took the plate to the sink and fled downstairs.

_Damn._ Now I'd have to pretend to have an interview. That meant I'd have to leave the house. Or pretend that my pretend interview was canceled. But just leaving the house for a few hours would be so much more bearable than explaining to Benta why I never left.

While I was out maybe I could con some poor sap out of twenty dollars or something. Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world.

**A/N: Woo, my first fanfiction! What do you think of the first chapter? Please review ^^**


	2. Chapter 2

As it would turn out, it's a lot harder to con people than I had originally thought. Well, it was a lot of work, anyway. A little too much, I must say. Hey, that should make you happy; I gave up a life of crime to become a Good Samaritan. Or at least, I gave up a life of crime. "Good Samaritan" might be pushing it.

I returned home after, oh, about an hour and a half. I found the city to be pretty boring; video games can offer way more excitement. To get back to my little room in Benta's house, I had to take a taxi. I had walked to wherever I was, but when one is walking around aimlessly, it doesn't take much to become lost. Luckily, taxi drivers pride themselves on being able to take you where you want to go (for quite the pretty penny, I might add), so I didn't even really need to know my way around the city. All I needed was the ability to find a cab, Benta's address, and thirty-two dollars, plus seven dollars for a tip. I didn't think I had walked far enough to put thirty-two dollars worth of distance between myself and Benta's place, but maybe the taxi driver was just a better con artist.

Benta wasn't there when I returned. She probably spent her day trying to give candy to small children in way that was as suspicious as possible, but, really, I don't know. She was never home during the day, though. She normally returned home sometime around ten o'clock at night from what I deduced from the sound of footsteps above me. This was nice for me (although, now that I think about it, how did she know I never left the house if she was hardly ever there?), because I did not want to have to deal with her any more that day. But what would come from breakfast? I couldn't skip it (free food=good). I decided to put that in the back of my mind and and to adopt a come-what-may attitude.

I was in the middle of humming the _Tetris_ theme song for the umpteenth time while playing _Warioland_ when, right on cue as the digital clock's reading switched to 10:00, I heard footsteps upstairs. _Welcome back, Benta_, I thought sarcastically. So, I guess I wasn't lucky enough to have her fall down an elevator shaft or something. Which, on the cons side, meant I would still have to deal with her, but on the pros side meant I'd still be getting my free meal. Wait, scratch that; if she _had_ fallen down an elevator shaft I could have raided her kitchen without fearing consequences.

Feeling kind of down because of this situation, I figured I might as well go to sleep. And, what do you know, I did.

_BANG! BANG! BANG! _Somebody – probably the cops, judging from the volume of the pounding – rudely knocked on my door the next morning."Breakfast in fifteen!" Benta's voice called from the other side of my door. Guess I was wrong about the cops.

"Uhhhh..." I moaned, "Uh-huh." Time to get up, get moving, face the morn, get a jump on the day, and all those other annoying little sayings mothers say to their children to make it seem like awakening three hours before you're ready to is a good thing.

Deciding it would be best to change my clothes – pajamas are waste of time: why bother putting them on if you're _asleep_? – I opened my suitcase, which I had yet to completely unpack, looking for something suitable to wear. The first thing my eyes rested upon was my purple Speedo, and I considered wearing it upstairs just to see if it caused Benta to collapse. Nah, as funny as that would be, it I decided against it. It was only eight AM after all, too early for it to be warm enough to wear something like that.

With the Speedo out of the picture, the only other clothing articles in my suitcase were a couple socks that would make great sock puppets with their wacky designs, a pair of boxers, some shades (if those count as "clothing articles"), a pair of pants that looked like they couldn't wait to get to Goodwill, and a vest that I could not remember having willingly bought. _Is this really everything I brought? What was going through my head while I was packing?_ If this were a sitcom, now would be the time when the show cuts to a flashback of me packing, deciding that in order to make room for all my necessary video games, I would have to bring a lot less clothes, and I would begin throwing a bunch of random clothes out. This isn't a sitcom, though, so I'll just make up a convincing lie on the spot, and you'll have no choice but to accept it: somebody at the airport went through my belongings and used a shrink-ray to shrink down a majority of my clothes to a size so small that a dust mite with a microscope would have a hard time seeing them.

I settled for the Goodwill jeans and the did-I-really-buy-this vest. Like I said, at eight in the morning it was a little chilly, so I didn't take off my shirt in exchange for the vest but instead wore the vest on top of it. _Ready to face Benta_, I thought, and began giving myself a little pep-talk. _You got this, you're looking sharp... ish, and if push comes to shove, she's old, you can always steal her hearing aid and then cuss her out. _I didn't even know if she really used a hearing aid, but it's best to plan for all possibilities.

Upstairs, Benta had put my food on the table, and she didn't look up when I entered the room and sat down in my chair. I looked at my oatmeal pancake (that's most likely what it was), and poured as much of the boysenberry syrup as I could before Benta began eying me suspiciously on it. Yum, yum.

Once I was nearly halfway through the pancake, Benta cleared her throat and said, "You did not get the job, did you?"

That was quite an accusation. How could she even know something like that? Was she psychic. No, if she were psychic she would have known that there was no real job interview. "Whatever do you mean?" I innocently asked.

Benta looked at me seriously. "They did not hire you. That is what I mean."

"How do you know?" I inquired. This could be taken two ways: a) how did you find out my secret? and b) this is news to me, who told you?

She took the option a approach: "Because you have no money and you know that you will not be getting any, so you have had to resort to stealing!"

You'd think she'd be a little nicer to the person who gives her money every month, but hey, I don't understand everything, I guess.

"Stealing? What are you talking about?" I kept my tone steady, and chose not to say "the hell" in between the words "what" and "are," just so I wouldn't rub her the wrong way.

"That vest! You stole it from a woman! The poor dear, she must be heartbroken to have such a nice vest missing. And I saw those pants you're wearing. You probably stole those out of the shopping cart that next to someone who was sleeping in the gutter!" Benta accused. Wasn't she exaggerating a bit? I couldn't have looked _that _bad, could I?

"Are you being serious?" I quickly continued, knowing Benta probably wouldn't know what a rhetorical question is: "I packed these. I brought these clothes with me from England."

Telling her I had come from England was not the brightest idea, I must say. "England? You're not from England! You have an _Australian_ accent! Or are you from a special part of England, hm? My god, not only do I have a dirt-broke tenant, but one so stupid that he doesn't even know enough geography to be aware of where he's from! Bah!"

I angrily shoved some of the oatmeal pancake in my mouth, just so that I could try to disgust her by talking with food in my mouth. "Well, Benta," I began through a mouthful of food, "I'm from Australia originally, but I just spent the last several years of my life in England." _And it was because I'm an orphaned genius, so don't go calling me stupid, ya witch._

"Mark! Swallow before speaking, boy; no one wants to see that!" _When she said "Mark" was she referring to moi?_ "It is _very_ rude!" Benta scolded. I couldn't believe _she_ was scolding _me_. _So much for being independent as an adult; this woman thinks she's my mom or something._ My angry, rude, unloving mom who happened to be a very cheap landlady.

"I _do_ _apologize_," I said, after swallowing loudly, imitating a cartoon character. I gobbled down the remainder of the pancake, resisting the urge to pinch my nose while chewing to save myself from this awful taste.

Finished, I put the place in the sink and scurried back downstairs to the Matt lair. Fuming, I whipped out my GameBoy to inspect my appearance in its screen. _I don't look that bad_, I thought. _Hell, I'd say I look good. Or maybe Benta slipped a drug into my food and I'm delusional._ It'd be best to just go with the former.

Satisfied with my looks, I fell backwards onto the bed, planning on playing whatever was in my GameBoy. I switched it on, but that annoying little red light alerting me that its batteries were almost dead was on. _Great_. I would have to leave the house _again_ to go get new batteries. Or...

Benta probably had batteries. I could always get some from her. I imagined myself approaching her to ask for some, but before imaginary me could even get the words out of his mouth, Benta started yelling at him about how she would have to install locks on the door leading upstairs if he kept coming up and disturbing her. Hm, not a worst-case-scenario, but it's best to avoid things that could be filed under the heading "bad scenarios." Okay, then, if I wanted to get batteries the easiest, cheapest way, I would just have to wait until Benta left, and then go upstairs and steal a couple batteries.

You're probably thinking right now, "What the hell? A _GameBoy_? Didn't they stop making those, like, seven years ago? And it needs _batteries_? Really, what the hell?" Okay, here's my argument: I have a GameBoy because _Tetris_ is more fun when played on one. And, yes, it needs batteries. Nintendo still hadn't figured out the whole "a charger that you can plug into the device and an electrical outlet in order to give it more energy" thing yet. Satisfied? Good; moving on.

Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps. That's all I kept hearing above my head. _Man, doesn't this woman ever sit down? _I wondered. _Or maybe she knows I'm listening, waiting for her to leave, and she doesn't want to give me that false impression that she's gone..._ When do you cross the line between odd paranoia and insanity?

_Well, it's about time_, I thought. Yes, finally she was gone. I no longer heard footsteps, I had heard her slam the front door, and I had her car drive away. I decided to wait another ten minutes just in case she came back to get something. I guess I have some luck, after all, because she didn't come back.

**Author's Note: There is not an emoticon that can describe my elation right now. If there were, it would look like :D on steroids. Thank you so very much to 7CrimsonKisses7 for reviewing and, um, alerting(?), ShinigamiMailJeevas for reviewing and alerting, CLOuDs-N-rAiNbOwS for alerting, and Escaping Dreams for reviewing, alerting, and favoriting. (A triple whammy! Whoa!) Yeah, I know "favoriting" isn't a word.**

**Haha, but spell-check approved of "Nintendo."**


	3. Chapter 3

We've all had those moments in our lives when we do something completely idiotic and, not wanting to actually accept the fact that we might be idiots, blame it on sleep deprivation. It turns out deciding to try to steal batteries from Benta was one of those ideas.

The stairs seemed to creak an awful lot when I walked up them that day. Perhaps they were trying to warn me, trying to tell me to turn around, go back to my room, and stay there until Benta knocked on my door to tell me breakfast was ready again. Yes, maybe that's what they were trying to do by making such a racket; but unfortunately I don't speak whatever language it is that stairs speak, so I'll never know.

"Now, where would she keep her batteries?" I mumbled. I walked slowly into the living room, planning on simply taking the batteries out of her television's remote control, but it turns out this woman thought the year was 1960, and she had one of those old televisions with dials. _What the hell?_ I thought. _But back to business. Where else could they be?_ It turns out that not many things really take batteries. There wasn't a single thing in her living room that ran on batteries, nor in her kitchen, she had no batteries in her kitchen drawers, she didn't have an electric toothbrush, I couldn't find any flashlights, and the only things she had in her hall closet were a bunch of towels and sheets and whatnot.

There was only one place left to check on my quest for batteries, a place I had hoped I would never have to see the inside of: Benta's bedroom. Hey, the less I knew of her personal life, the easier I could sleep at night. _I'll just go in and get out quickly. _I turned the knob on her door and quickly flung it open. I really should have just gone back downstairs at this point. But thus is the gift of hindsight. Why I didn't turn around, I can only blame sleep deprivation. And being blinded by my want of batteries.

What I saw when I opened the door made me realize I had been placing Benta in the wrong stereotype this whole time. She wasn't a stereotypical angry landlady (the kind who spout off in her native language when the rent was overdue), she was a stereotypical _witch_. Ha, silly me, huh?

If you'd like to know what caused me to reach this conclusion, I shall elaborate. Actually, I have no idea whether or not you'd like me to elaborate, but it's kind of necessary that I do so in order for later events to be understood. So, I shall.

To get a good picture in your head of what Benta looked like, imagine the Wicked Witch of the West. Now give her a more natural skin tone, gray hair, make her about a foot shorter, and replace all the Wicked Witch garb with a random outfit from your grandma's closet. This might seem like quite the transformation, but when I applied all those things in reverse, I realized that she does indeed look like the Wicked Witch. There's part A of my conclusion on Benta's being a witch.

Part B is a little more obvious. When I threw open the door to her bedroom, I found myself staring into a dark room, the walls covered in shelves containing books with creepy titles (_Pedophilia 101, _no I'm kidding, more like _The Salem Witch Hunts: Tips From the Survivors_), jars with preserved animals in them like one might find in an enthusiastic biology teacher's classroom, bundles of various herbs, crystals, several little dolls (which I suspected were _voodoo_ dolls), candles, and one pencil cup containing three Sharpies, each of a different color. I'm surprised there were no pentagrams visible, but I guess she was only into the witchcraft part of Wicca.

Now I understood why she was so mean; it's a part of the Witch's Code of Conduct.

_Batteries..._ thought I, rather stupidly. Hey, I'm not exactly the type of guy who turns the other way when he sees a black cat, or holds his breath while passing a cemetery. This stuff didn't spook me.

I trudged into the room. After scanning her odd yet interesting shelves, I looked under the bed. _Nada_. Not even a dust bunny. To the closet, then. I opened it, half expecting to find a broomstick. You can probably guess that I didn't. Instead, the closet was filled with clothes. Normal, old lady, pastel-colored clothes, the kind that one would wear to a Tupperware party or a book club. Well, I could have gone through her pockets in search of batteries, but that would have been all-too time consuming. I could hear my poor little GameBoy crying downstairs. It _needed_ me.

Above all her Tupperware party clothes, there was a shelf with two boxes on it. I pulled one down. On it, in Sharpie, the words "Sue's Cards" were written. I opened it, and, as the box had said, it was full of greeting cards. I pulled one out, curious. _"Dearest Sue (or is it Benta, now?) - Happy birthday. I hope to see you at the next family gathering. Love, Alice"_ Well, that was boring. No need to bother looking at any more cards; Benta had probably already removed any money that had been inside them. I dug to the bottom of the box, but there I found nothing there but the other end of the box. Time to pull out the next box. This one wasn't labeled. I opened it. I still have nightmares about its contents: Benta's undergarments. Her underwear, her bras, a corset... Oh, man, I need to stop here or I'm going to start reliving it.

Let's fast-forward to something less terrifying.

I figured her room was pretty devoid of batteries, just like the rest of her house. That was a darn shame. And a complete waste of time. _Guess I'll just head back downstairs._ I wish I could go back in time and yell at myself : _"Oh, now you want to go downstairs? You moron! Why didn't you listen to the stairs when they were telling you not to go up there? Yeah, great timing, buddy, great timing."_

My life really does seem to have the worst timing. Just as I was shutting Benta's door, she appeared before me, the way the murderer appears before the wimpy girl who is never actually killed in a slasher movie: suddenly, silently, unexpectedly, and with a weapon. Although not as threatening as the weapon a murderer would hold, Benta held in her hand a glass bottle, as we all know from the various action movies we've seen, can definitely be used as a weapon.

If I were in a slasher movie, I would take pride in not being the wimpy girl before whom the killer appears. With this being stated, I did not allow myself to react the way the wimpy girl would, with a shriek and a vain attempt to escape back the way she came. No, I simply jumped back, surprised, and managed to release from my throat the words, "Wh-what are you doing back so early?" Actually, I think I'd prefer to be the wimpy girl. At least she doesn't die. My character would definitely wind up being one of the numerous victims if I were in a slasher movie.

**Author's Note: Terribly sorry it took a few millennia for me to update. At least, it feels that way. I hope I can promise to update soon. If it makes up for anything, I really wanted to write more for this chapter, but it's pretty late (oh, technically it's _early_) where I am, so I figured this is long enough. :/ I was just getting to the part that actually forms the plot, too.**

**:D Muchas gracias a Pineapple Pen for alerting, MrsJeevasKeehl for alerting and favoriting, Exploding Potatoes for alerting, favoriting, _and_ reviewing (that's _three _for the price of one), Aeleita for alerting and reviewing, HannahFaps for reviewing, Stillicidium for reviewing, 7CrimsonKisses7 for reviewing, and TheLegacyLives for reviewing. I send happiness wavelengths to you all!**


	4. Chapter 4

And now, for the chance to bring home $10,000, what is the answer to this question: "Wh-what are you doing back so early?"

Is it a) _"My spider sense was tingling," _b) _"I sensed a __disturbance in the force,"_ c) _"I never left, for I am a clone of the person you believe is standing in front of you with a threatening object," _or is it d) _"I forgot to bring my threatening object with me when I left for my knitting group" _?

And the correct answer is... Oh, wait, it's not any of those. Oops. So sorry for getting your hopes up, folks. If you're still curious as to what the answer is, I suppose I'll tell you.

"What am _I _doing here so early? What are _you_ doing up here at all?" Benta screamed in my face. And, man, did her breath stink. Maybe she gave up toothpaste for Lent. Wait, no, Lent's in the spring, and... Gah, I hate when I get sidetracked.

"I was looking for batteries," I said quickly. If those words had been in a speech bubble, I would have reached up and erased them, because I immediately regretted saying them.

"Batteries? You were looking for batteries? And why in the world would you think I have batteries? No, what in the world made you think it would be okay for you to come upstairs and rifle through my belongings! You are seriously testing my limits, boy! I let you rent out my downstairs out of the goodness of my heart, and you, having absolutely _no_ respect for personal privacy, come up and start going through my things!"

_Not li__ke you had much to see, _I thought, pushing the image of the contents of the unmarked box out of my head. "Um, I'm sorry..."

"Sorry? Is that it? You ought to be saying, 'Please, oh, please forgive me, Benta!' I ought to put you in indentured servitude! Do you know what they do in some countries to people like you? Feel lucky this is the United States of America, where there are police and pesky police-calling neighbors around every corner, or, boy, I would scalp you!" _Wai__t... what? This woman is a nu__t._

"Right, um, well, I'm not too keen on the idea of being an indentured servant or being scalped," I joked nervously, "so how about I just get my things and get out of here? Y'know, out of your hair, you won't have to worry about me anymore. I'll even leave a picture of me for you to pin up on a dartboard." Way to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, past me. Yeah, good thinking, _make a joke with her._ I only hope that I've outgrown – no pun intended – my idiocy by now.

"You are a vile person!" the witch screeched. Man, she must have been an opera singer back in her younger days. "You have no respect for me or my things! You appreciate _nothing! _And then you even go and try to make light of this by making some pathetic excuse for a joke! Aaaargh!" She then began spouting off in what I assumed at the time was her native tongue. I say "assumed" because, if you haven't guessed, I was wrong. What she was saying was actually in some ancient weirdo language derived from Latin, but would most likely be unrecognizable to the speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian.

_"Viz dethidis oho, eto dethidis voro. Ito, rep zex tenatissi rolo, eto itor der bus ut rinulo!" _And then, two things happened. One, she cackled. Yes, _cackled._ Like, a this-woman-was-probably-the-Wicked-Witch-of-the-West's-cackle-instructor sort of cackle.

And two, I passed out. We're talking Hollywood-style passing out: tunnel-vision, lightheadedness, dramatic fall (because I _always_ fall dramatically), the whole nine yards.

**-xX****x-**

When I awoke, I had a mini-hangover (again, no pun intended. Man, this ain't even supposed to be foreshadowing, but I'm sure you can predict what's coming up rather accurately by now.) A splitting headache, nausea, my body ached, I felt dehydrated, and everything was much too bright. It all went away after about ten seconds, though.

Unfortunately, after the hangover, I looked up. And I saw a man's shoe. I really shouldn't have looked up, because this happened to be the world's biggest shoe, and it terrified me. Hey, things that are abnormally large take some getting used to for me, okay? Yup, the world's largest shoe; or at least, that's what my first impression of it was. By squinting and looking farther up, I could see that there was a man attached to the shoe. _Well, if this is the same giant that wanted to eat Jack, I guess I'm safe; I'm not an Englishman._

But then... _Holy ****, not the time to be sarcastic. That crazy witch _– Isn't rhyming great? – _used her voodoo mojo to shrink me._

Yeah, not good times.

**A/N: Go ahead, feel free to throw your rotting tomatoes and cabbages at me. I deserve no less! I last updated on Friday, August 13****th****, 2010, 1:03 AM (Pacific Standard Time), and now here it is, Sunday, el cinco de mayo! I mean, el cinco de septiem****bre (I couldn't resist.) How awful of me! But remember, patience is a virtue :')**

**In case you were wondering why I included "Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, or Romanian," it's because these are the five Romance languages, the languages that descended from Latin. But you knew that.**

**I will now hand out those virtual cookies that seem to be all the rage right now to: J is for Jeevas, Lovelessxx191, scrambled-eggs-at-midnight, Ever .Abandoned, Emiko Suzuki, Diehard243, breathe chaotic, bffs4evaMattandMello**** for alerting; to Aeleita, J is for Jeevas, scrambled-eggs-at-midnight, Diehard243, bffs4evaMattandMello, 7CrimsonKisses7, , and Lovelessxx191 for reviewing (and to coloredsparks for your anonymous review); to Emiko Suzuki, Diehard243, scramb****led-eggs-at-midnight, bffs4evaMattandMello, J is for Jeevas, Lovelessxx191, and for favoriting. Enjoy, enjoy, but be warned: these "cookies" are **_**virtual, **_**so don't go tearing apart your computer looking for them. It's like saying "lol". It do****esn't really really mean anything.**

**That came out wrong.**

**It all means everything.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Nya, ha, ha, you're in it for the long-haul now.**

Of all the horrible fashion blunders made in the past decade, most fashion magazines agree that the worst of them all is wearing socks with your sandals. Man Number Sixty-three probably wasn't very well-read in fashion magazines, because he made this ghastly mistake. I can't say much about this, though, because he was certainly ahead of Woman Number Seventy's game, who was wearing high heels of two different styles and colors. She, too, wore socks. Bright green socks. She was either going to a costume party, or Miss Woman Number Seventy had been very out of it that morning.

Woman Number Seventy-one had on clogs.

Man Number Sixty-four had on loafers.

Teenage Girl Number Forty-two was wearing moccasins.

Man Number Sixty-five wore sneakers.

Runaway Child Number Two wasn't wearing shoes, but his mother, Woman Number Seventy-two was dutifully chasing after him, holding a pair of small sneakers, most likely wishing to save the child's feet from a fate of blisters and roughness. That poor kid would never be able to live out his dream of becoming a man who walks on burning coals if Woman Number Seventy-two caught up to him. Run, Runaway Child Number Two, run!

Runaway Child Number Two didn't make it very far before Woman Number Seventy-two caught him.

Man Number Sixty-six wore flip-flops.

Group of Teens Number Twenty-eight wore too many shoes to identify.

Woman Number Seventy-three wore heels. Man Number Sixty-seven wore loafers. Girl Number Fifty-six, who was walking between Woman Number Seventy-three and Man Number Sixty-seven, wore Mary Janes.

I saw a lot of shoes that day. Hey, when you're about the size of a cigarette butt, the view ain't exactly panoramic.

In most books or movies that went straight to cable, being small is great! The world is a great, big adventureland! It's like a fantastic playground! O! what fun there is to be had!

In the aforementioned situations, though, the victim of the crazy shrinking evil voodoo spell usually comes to grips with their situation in their house or in some place they're _familiar with_. Let us not forget that I woke up on the streets of Los Angeles. The streets I had never but once traveled. The streets on which I had counted over one hundred thirty-eight people tromping around. In shoes.

I saw a man wearing hiking boots step on a cigarette butt. Boy, was that a wake up call. A distressing one. It sounded a little something like this: _"That cigarette butt equals YOU! You are a dead cigarette butt if you don't get the hell out of the way! People, big! Shoes, dangerous!" _The alarm clock from hell.

And so, I hid. Really, it was the safest thing to do. I hid under a garbage can. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation and you are prone to fainting, this would not be the safest thing to do, as the stench was this side of insufferable, and their was a freaking huge spider eying me down from the other side. Yet, I managed to enter a vegetative state – being lazy for years really gave me some great practice for this – and entertained myself by watching folks, taking note of the WMDs – Weapons of Matt's Destruction – that they had armed their feet with. Superman probably would have called this "meditation," and he would use this time to slow his heartbeat down to about four beats a minute in order to fool that dastardly villain into thinking he was dead. But, in case you had your doubts, I'm not Superman. So, I didn't meditate, I vegetated. And I didn't slow my heartbeat down. Frankly, I think the whole situation fired the little sucker into overdrive.

My sound of my overactive heart was probably making that spider drool, but my attention was on another aspect of my survival, food. It'd been a good five hours since I woke up on the street, and now, without a penny big enough to spend to my name, I sat, the garbage can my sanctuary, watching the passersby, my stomach getting ready to declare mutiny and digest itself—I'm above science—and not a soul knew. (This incident would later be the inspiration for my debut as a country singer.)

_Don't be picky, go for the garbage, shrinky-dink!_ I know that's what you're thinking. Well, let's not forget who the genius here is, eh? _Moi, _not _toi*_. Of course my first idea was a buffet of _basura_*, but unless that spider was radioactive and decided to lend me some of its venom, there was no way I would be scaling the trash can to get to all the smelly, contaminated morsels at the top. So, the garbage was out. Then again, I could treat myself to the most unhealthy meal of my life and gorge on the gum stuck to the sidewalk. Hmm... nah.

Alas, it would seem that all hope had been lost, would it not? I wasn't Spiderman's Mini-me, the gum would most likely give me a nasty case of pneumonic plague, and if I didn't get nourishment within the next 1,003 hours, Death and I would be shooting the breeze before I was ready and willing to. Yet, down from the heavens came the angelic sound of Italian curse words, and God dropped food onto the land, his way of saying, _O, Matt, my son, thou must abandon thy melodramatic ways and man up. _For, before my eyes, lay the best food on Earth below latkes: doughnuts.

Before I could even register the connection between doughnuts, food, and nourishment, those survival instincts of mine had me scrambling from the relative safety of the garbage can out into the red zone. I ran seventeen centimeters in no time flat.

The doughnuts were simple, yet beautiful. A mess of the classic glazed were spread across the sidewalk, their sweet icing glimmering in the never-dying LA sun. Each individual doughnut looked the same as its companions; each a golden brown color, imperfectly round, the sugar waiting for the consumer inside practically throwing itself upon you. For a moment, life became slow-motion, and I enjoyed it to the fullest, sinking my teeth into the nearest doughnut as if I were a gorgeous woman on a chocolate commercial.

Everything must come to an end though, good things especially.

_"Por__ca vacca!*"_ I heard an angry man grunt. I looked around. _"Cazzo!*"_ The shouter was the Sun, the other walkers were measly planets making their way around the celestial giant. _"Porca Madonna!*"_ These shoes were huge. And no, that ain't just from my point of view, so don't go discrediting my words just yet. These shoes, if they were miraculously given life, would be the schoolyard bullies of shoes, they were so big. All the other shoes would be too intimidated to even go near them. On top of that, the enormous shoes looked brand-spanking-new, made out of what my uneducated-in-the-art-of-shoe-making eyes told me to be alligator skin, and, if I may be so cliched, made some damn good mirrors.

The shoes' owner knelt down, and I saw that this guy was most definitely the schoolyard bully back in the day. To sum up this guy's appearance in as little words as necessary, he was big and brutish. Let your imagination wander with that.

Okay! Stop wandering! We need to focus here.

You know who my childhood idol always was? The Cowardly Lion. Yeah, I used to think, _Oh, boy, when I grow up, I want to be just like him!_ And, on this day, my dream came true. I suppressed that eager li'l scream that began begging to be released as soon as the monster leaned down, and the _flight_ part of fight or flight kicked in. Hiding in such a pusillanimous way that it would bring a tear to my idol's eye, I clung to my safety doughnut for dear life as it was lifted off the ground and thrown down roughly in a box.

The man sighed. _"Accidenti,*"_I heard him mutter. At least he was calming down, no? That greatly reduced the risk of being crushed by an angry fist, or worse—an alligator skin shoe out for blood.

My safety doughnut was joined quickly by ten others, and the lid was closed. I felt the box rising into the air, hoping this wouldn't be similar to a roller coaster—never was good with those—and heard the man say bitterly in Italian, which I have oh-so-courteously decided to translate for you, "It doesn't matter, those fools deserve this. Ha, ha, ground-pastries. Yes, I hope they enjoy every bite."

It's times like these that people have sudden religious conversions. They start praying to every god that can pop into their head, giving thanks for their safety, and begging for further safety and protection. I considered having a religious conversion myself, but I decided not to follow the crowd with this one—I knew so many gods anyway, I might really have pneumonic plague before I got through them all. Instead, I kept a death-grip on my safety doughnut, trying to put a glare on my face that would ensure that none of the other doughnuts messed with me. Hey, it had already been a fairly out-there day; I was entitled to my fair share o' craziness.

After about ten minutes, though, my death-grip began to give out, and I decided, ah, what the heck, it ain't going nowhere no time soon. But as soon as I let go of the doughnut, my hands were flying back on at the command of my stomach. Yeah, I only got a couple bites in before Mister Alligator-Shoes Man came and tossed my safety doughnut into this here box. So, it finally dawned on me: I was surrounded by doughnuts, and there was no one here to stop me from gorging myself. What a wonderland.

I made quite a dent in my safety doughnut—for someone my size, that is. I mean, you, considering you're probably someone people don't have trouble seeing, might mistake my "dent" for the where the doughnut had been speared with a fork's prong. (In my world, people _do_ stab their doughnuts before eating them; radioactivity has been known to cause things to come to life, and it would absolutely mean doom and destruction for all mankind if doughnuts happened to be affected.)

Immobile due to the fact that I had just stuffed myself with something that would in no way satisfy my body's need for nutrients—and also because the box was swaying, making it hard to remain steady—I tried to think of something to pass the time. Not the best idea on my part. My mind drifted to, yes, I'm sure you've guessed, my lonely little GameBoy, its batteries dying back in my room, and how I was completely unable to help the poor dear. It was oh so far away, and there was nothing I could do. Thus, boredom moved into my mind pretty quickly. _Ah, for__get it, I'll just play Tetris in my mind._

_Tetris_ wasn't very fun when I didn't have a gaming device to play it on. Victory was inevitable.

I let my mind wander. _Tetris_, I thought, _Tetris, Tetris. Hm, sounds like Titanic. Titanic, iceberg. Atlantic. Paci__fic. Peaceful*. Quiet. Deaf. Mute. Television. Black and white. Chess. King. Execution. Guillotine. French revolution. Aristocrat. Aristocats. Walt Disney. Mickey Mouse. Algernon. Charlie*. Charles Manson. Califonia. Golden State. Gold rush. San Francisco.__ Saint Francis. Catholicism. Sin. Cardinal Sins. Gluttony, wrath, sloth, lust, greed, envy, pride._ It was a good thing I hadn't made any religious conversions, I had experienced at least half those things within the last twenty-four hours; there was no way I'd be left alive. _Pride. Gay pride. Parades. Chinese New Year parades. Year of the Ox. Cows. Milk. Pasteurization. Louis Pasteur. Chemistry. Chemotherapy. Cancer. Lung cancer. Cigarettes. Tobacco. Marijuana. Altered mind-set. Sleep deprivation._

Enough. Man, would you mind if I skipped over the rest of my time-wasting? Really, it's pretty mundane, and unless you're my obsessive stalker or something, you likely skipped over that last paragraph anyway because it's so damn humdrum and don't really care to know what I was thinking to entertain myself while chilling with my safety doughnut.

So, let's go, time jump!

Finally, Mister Alligator-Shoes Man stopped his incessant walking. Worried for a second that it would be in to the garbage with me, then off to the garbage dump where I would either be crushed in a garbage compactor or devoured by rats, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard a knock, followed by a man's voice saying, "Hey, guys, look, this [censored word] is good for something! Put them done-uts on the table, man." I had seen enough oh-no-it-looks-like-I'm-now-a-one-twenty-seventh-of-my-previous-size movies to have at least twenty escape plans if worse came to worst and I found myself looking at a guy's uvula beyond his incisors, so it's not like I had a reason to go into _shock_ or anything. (Rats are another story entirely, let me tell you.)

Only a bit more of the shaky ride in the doughnut box, and then I—and my safety doughnut and its homies—were set down gently enough on what could only be the designated table. The lid was flipped open, and I suppressed a hiss at the suddenly bright light.

"Dude, what the fuck, you di'n't get no chocolate sprinkle done-uts?" the man decked out in gold chains, whose voice matched that of the man who had answered the door, complained.

"Apologies," Mister Alligator-Shoe Man apologized.

"Psh, I don't give a shit. Doughnuts is doughnuts, man. You take what you get," a younger voice said. The hand that I am going to say belonged to the same person as this voice reached in and took the doughnut closest to my safety doughnut. I brought back my death grip.

"He's right. Quit fucking 'round, man, 'cause this comed outta _my_ money, ya know," a female said, her voice thick with a Chinese accent. I hoped she would talk more.

"Hey, Imma taking some done-uts, y'all. Chill. What y'all so worked up 'bout anyway? They's just done-uts," said the golden boy.

"I could ask you the same thing," said a deep voice, and the group laughed.

Then four young hands hurried up, all eager for their treat. Their cuticles were short, their nails clean, their moustaches trim and neat—And this was odd, because, you know, hands haven't any moustaches. Four other hands followed them, and yet another four. And thick and fast, they came at last, and more, and more, and more, all hopping into the box and scrambling to get a "done-ut."

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating. Only nine hands—minus the young lad who had already taken his pastry—reached in to scare me by threatening to choose my safety doughnut. In the end, of course, my safety doughnut was the lone survivor. It was just a matter of time, we would soon be chosen.

Have I ever complained about my luck? Well, my luck is sort of a mixed bag. I mean, all the worst things happen to me (I suspect my parents were changelings), but then every once in a while something _good_ comes along and says, "Yo, Matt, it's been a while, huh? Yeah, I bet you were really missing Good Fortune, eh? Ha, ha, never fear, ol' buddy, ol' pal, ol' friend, because I am here, you are saved!" But the problem is, that something good is usually something small. You know the story of Pandora's box, no? Pandora was just being her usually disobedient self, and opened up the box that her husband had told her _not_ to open, under any circumstances, thus releasing all the evils that had been sealed in the box onto the world, and the only thing that remained in the box was Hope. That story can be used to convey my luck. I got all this crap, and then there's this one little good thing left over. Serendipity had not kicked in yet.

After that seemingly random paragraph on my luck and Pandora's box, you must be thinking to yourself, _Shut up and get back to something interesting._ (You're so demanding, you do realize that, no?) Okay, but how about this: that paragraph wasn't randomly placed there simply for the reason that I needed to vent! Ha, ha! And, no, you did not know that. No. You didn't.

Alas, my safety doughnut turned out to be the Chosen One. I tagged along, too, of course; it'd be risky to ditch my safety doughnut. And, now here's where the luck kicks in and serendipity begins, Mister Alligator-Shoes Man happened to be the one to select the safety doughnut. Biology lessons came shooting back into my mind, and I was reminded of how unpleasant the human digestive system is. Nah, that ain't how I want to go down.

So, I went down. (Ah, because everyone loves plays on words.) _Let's see,_ I thought, _his shoulder looks about, oh, fifteen centimeters away. If I have been blessed with super-jump, I think I can make it. Damn, I don't have super-jump, though. I can fall like I'm no exception to Newton's law of gravity, though. Yeah, that's my b__est bet. Okay, I'll jump, no, fall onto his collar... It's right... there! _The view from up there was quite astonishing, really. There were eight people in the room, Mister Alligator-Shoes Man seemed to be dressed the nicest out of them all. Why, then, did it seem he was pushed around? The world may never know. One thing the world can know, though, is that Mister Alligator-Shoes Man wore a jacket with a collar. An actual collar, the kind that all the cool cats would pop up back in the eighties. And his collar was my target. _Target in sight, commencing operation Thank-God-I'm-Not-Acrophobic in T-2 seconds. One. __¡__Geronimoooo!_

Yes, it really is a good thing I'm not acrophobic. If I were, I probably would have gone into shock when I missed Mister Alligator-Shoes Man's collar.

Yeah, in case you didn't pick up on it yet, I'm dead. And if you question how I'm able to type if I'm ghost, I will ensure that every chain letter you don't send comes true.

_Huh? That makes no sense_, you're thinking. Of course it makes no sense. Sarcasm is an art, you know, and no ever seems to really understand art these days.

If you're still scratching your head, let me spell it out: I. Am. Not. Dead. I did miss Mister Alligator-Shoes Man's collar—by a long shot—but before the ground and I could begin to have a much closer relationship, I caught the hem of Mister Alligator-Shoes Man's jacket.

I looked up at Mister Alligator-Shoe Man. He popped the rest of my safety doughnut into his mouth—_No! Safety doughnuuutt!_-and wiped his hands on his jacket. _Oh, not good at all._ The jacket shook as he rubbed his hands on the fabric, and, sadly, my death-grip failed me.

But, hey didn't I say that I'm not dead? Why, I believe I did. (Those of you booing in the back row, know this: I know where you live. Yeah, now you shut up, huh?)

Pockets, which I've really come to love, are what saved me. Well, I guess it was only one pocket that saved me, but I still give thanks to the entire Pocket community.

After being shaken free from the hem of MASM's jacket, I began clawing at the fabric I passed as I fell, hoping that if my life really is just a video game designed to amuse alien children that they'd tap A enough times for me to stop falling and save myself. And whatayaknow, those li'l alien ankle biters actually know how to play the game. I caught on to the opening of MASM's pants pocket, and—most likely employing all the upper body strength I'd accumulated over the years of sitting on a couch seeing the random bodybuilder while flipping through channels on the television—managed to pull myself up and into his pocket.

It was everything you'd expect it to be like in that pocket. Dark, warm, soft. Uncomfortable, yes. See, MASM must have just wanted to get his exercise earlier, because I landed on what appeared to be his car keys. And, as I hope we all know, car keys are most often metal, hard, blunt, and they stick out every which way. It was inevitable, no? That I would land on his keys.

There were crumbs of who knows what accumulated (or perhaps they were in the process of _accumulating_) in the corners of his pocket. I decided to rest in the middle of his pocket, staying away from the crumbs. Who knows, maybe the crumbs carried dormant smallpox viruses. Who cares if 1980* had ended some twenty-nine years ago, I wasn't taking any chances.

"What choo standing 'round for?" the golden boy's voice came, interrupting my internal debate on the chances of my getting smallpox coming in contact with the crumbs.

"Yeah, you can't be _wanting_ to be here right now, can you?" The gloriously accented woman. "You never want to be here," she added.

"Oh. Yes. I will go," the meek MASM submitted. He began to turn to walk out of the room, and I knew that if decided to walk back to where ever he had come from, I would be needing some motion-sickness pills.

"Yeah, you go, and you next time bring me some of dem chocolate sprinkle done-uts, you got me, man?"

"Mm-hm. I got you." He took a step. Oh, no.

"Yo! Wait, man," a voice that had not yet spoken piped up. "How 'bout you next time bring us something exotic, like sushi or some shit like that."

"That's not exotic!" argued another unidentifiable voice. "They's called California Rolls for a reason, dude. Them sushi cooker dudes say that the shit's from Japan, but anybody who ain't dumb as nothing could figger out that they's American food."

"Don't act stupid, boy," said the deep voice that had made the assembly laugh earlier. "They are not from America in the first place. What kind of American would call it _sushi_? Nah, nah, nah, we'd call it _ fish 'n' seaweed_." Again, everybody laughed. Maybe this guy had laughter prerecorded, and would just press the button to play it after he said anything.

Once the laughter had abruptly stopped, MASM cleared his throat and said, "Okay. I'll bring doughnuts, and, um, something exotic, too, next time."

"Yeah, you'd better!" golden boy's voice called out.

"Psh, quit being such an asshole," said the voice I had identified as only being "younger" earlier.

MASM quietly walked out of the room, shutting the door softly behind him. This would be like riding the Matterhorn on a full stomach, wouldn't it?

He seemed fairly bitter. No, he seemed _very _bitter. _"They are so insufferable,"_ he mumbled in Italian, his Italian accent flawless, but his American accent just as impressive. _"Bring _'chocolate sprinkle done-uts' _and _'exotic sushi'_ next time, they say. Yes, I will happily bring you your damn _'done-uts'_ when I see you in Hell!"_ He sighed, and I could only imagine what he was thinking.

Step. Step. Step. .... I put my hand to my forehead. _ Damn, why aren't any of my ideas ever ingenious ones? _I looked over at the crumbs in one of the corners. _It would be more bearable over there... But I __risk drowning in crumbs or coming down with a case of smallpox if I go over there. _. I gave in, and scooted my way over to higher corner, where I was least likely to be crushed by keys.

The crumbs weren't as bad as I'd preconceived, thankfully. There weren't enough to drown me. I was still a little iffy on the whole smallpox thing, but it shook a lot less up there. Hey, you can't win 'em all.

**Author's Note: Whoa. I was going to make this longer, but then I thought, **_**Nah, the**__**se are busy people who read this, I can't go making them read anything longer than six pages in a chapter, ya know?**_** The length of this is a ****(****distraction****)**** apology for taking so long to update. It's because I was procrastinating writing an essay, and then anot****her essay, and few more essays after that. Actually, I had to write thirty-eight essays. And each had to be at least ten pages long. And they were all on obscure subjects that are hardly ever written about in books and that even Google has trouble finding.**** And whenever I started thinking, **_**Hey, I wanna go write some more of the story**_**, my mom's procrastination senses would start tingling, and she'd rush in from where ever she was and say, "You'd better be working on your essays, young lady." So, I just didn't**** go near a computer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.**

**But next chapter: Mello actually becomes a character whose name I actually write! Have you noticed, I only mentioned Mello in the first chapter, and that was only a couple paragraphs.**

**Now, to decode the phrases near the asterisks.**

_**Basura**_**- **Spanish, "garbage;" I just had to put this because alliteration is sick.

_**Porca vacca**_**- **Italian, literally means "pig cow"

_**Cazzo- **_Italian, "fuck"

_**Porca Madonna**_**- **Italian, _Madonna_, aka the Virgin Mary; this is a rather impolite phrase, and I'm not sure how to translate it exactly

_**Accidenti**_**- **Italian, it looks like "accident," but it's meaning is closer to "damn"

_**Pacific. Peaceful**_**- **In Spanish, "pacifico" means "peaceful," and "Pacifico" is the name of the Pacific Ocean

_**Mickey Mouse. Algernon. Charlie**_**- **This is an allusion to _Flowers for Algernon_. There is a mouse in the story named Algernon, and a man named Charlie. Just in case you didn't know.

_**Who cares if 1980...**_**- **8, 1980 is the day that it was officially declared that smallpox had been completely wiped out from the world

**And, pneumonic plague is a real thing. Look it up if you'd like. And, who**** caught the allusion to **_**Alice's Adventures in Wonderland**_**?**

**I hope no one's feelings were hurt when they found out that some people got virtual cookies but they didn't. (Psst, don't tell anyone, but the cookies weren't real!)**

**Because it's very late and I hav****e very school to-very-morrow (and because this is getting very ****long) I'm afraid I cannot thank everyone so dearly for reviewing, alerting, and other -ing words. But **_**grazie mille**_**, **_**todo el mundo**_**! (It's Spanalian! Spanish and Italian. Because I haven't butche****red enough languages.)**


	6. Chapter 6

Who'd've guessed it, eh? Mister Alligator Shoes Man, he actually had a name. Hey, no need to hide your shock. Unless they're watching you.

"Paul Castagnola."

_Paul_. That's the name he gave to the woman at the dry cleaners. He may have given her a fake name, but what a shocking development, no? A name!

Still, I do admit that I was expecting something a bit more... manly, tough, intimidating. Something to make folks on an online dating site think he was a brawny slickster in a biker gang. A name like "Torpedestructionator*." Clearly, this wouldn't be his real given name, but, ah, how thoughtful of the government, allowing people to legally change their names!

"Paul" is just such a wimpy name. It sounds like the kind of name that the balding man in the apartment next door might have in a sitcom. And said balding man would be a Star Trek nerd, would be hopeless when it comes to a love life, and would often contemplate changing his phone number to escape his doting mother's phone calls. He'd be that guy who doesn't realize that he annoys everybody. The guy who could write a book on the incidences in which he was beaten up. In the fourth grade alone.

"Paul" is not a good name for MASM. It doesn't even have enough syllables. Given names with less than two syllables don't count in my book.

Pretend I wasn't just discriminating against myself. Ugh, I need a coffee.

Hmm, I was going somewhere with this...

Oh! That's right.

"Paul Castagnola," MASM said to the woman behind the counter at the dry cleaners, myself still chilling in his crumby pocket, finding this name to be rather fishy. I think that at this point, you will agree with me when I say: Paul Castagnola is an alias.

"Yes," the woman replied, her Indian accent clear even in a word as short as "yes". "You can pick up the jacket on tomorrow, near time to close. Five o'clock."

"Okay, thanks," said he. There was the _cha-ching_ of an old-school cash register being opened, and I thanked my lucky stars—all two that are visible in the night sky in Los Angeles—that he didn't keep his wallet in _my_ pocket.

Paul reached into a pocket that wasn't currently the hidey-hole of an itsy-bitsy Australian, and, presumably, paid the lady. We then left the establishment. He forgot his receipt.

Now, me, personally, I ain't never had my clothes dry cleaned. But then again, I've never been so affluent that I could just go out and spend my undeserved money on alligator-skin shoes, either. Still, having never experienced what I can only believe is the grand joy of walking into a dry cleaners and paying them, with _legal tender_, to make your clothes look all perdy again, I am not the best judge of the system. Nor am I the best judge of those who prefer to use this system. Such as Mister Paul Shoes Man Castagnola Alligator. That name ain't never gonna stick.

Yes, it seems I was wrong about MASM (ah, that's more like it). He was not the big brutish man I thought he was originally. I should have seen it coming, though. First impressions are usually wrong, after all. Hey, at least I don't have to worry about crazies burning me at the stake, calling me a witch because of my psychic powers which allow me to accurately define a person's character. Because you see, as it would turn out, MASM carried a gun.

It's true. A handgun. Black, silver, tucked into the front of his pants—most likely because he was too snobby to buy an American holster. And as we all know, those who carry guns are the weakest of the weak. They kill people from 200 meters away, and then they have the nerve to brag about it. _"Yeah, I killed the bastard. He owed me money, wouldn't pay, I had to blow that son away. Fool can't mess with me now." _No one deserves bragging rights for killing someone unless they kill them with their bare hands. Shooting someone, that's a cheap shot. And I thought MASM was above that. When I saw that gun, he lost all my respect. (Because somewhere, deep down, I'm sure I respected him for _some_thing. Like for being such a snazzy dresser.)

Actually, maybe I shouldn't be too harsh on MASM. I'm sure it's not like he _wanted _to carry a gun. It's just that any worthy mafioso wouldn't be caught dead without one. Yeah, when you join the Mafia, they make you sign a contract, and one of the terms is that you will always carry a weapon as intimidating as a gun, if not more. So, I won't blame MASM, nor will I call him a wimp, a pansy, a chicken, a sissy, a fraidy-cat, or a lily-livered yellow-bellied son of a one-eyed prairie dog*. He's just an idiot.

He is an idiot for more reasons than one. Of course, there's the whole carrying a gun thing, but then there's that whole joining the Mafia thing. Only a suicidal imbecile would do something like willingly become part of a large criminal organization, one that only has one option when it comes to leaving said organization: in a box*.

I recently developed the ability to read minds, an achievement in which I take much pride, so I know what you're thinking: _Oh, two things that make him an idiot, big w__hoop. I could name a dozen things that make _you_ an idiot right off the bat._ But I have more than two reasons! (I always do—shouldn't you be used to this? Why do I have to keep reading your mind, eh?) Y razón número tres es: He didn't change his pants.

You might actually be grateful for this. If not for MASM's laziness, I'd have no story to tell. Of course, if Benta hadn't found her inner-witch, I wouldn't be in this boat either. Nor would I be had I simply bought extra batteries while I was out. Or if I had just not moved in to Benta's place. Really, this whole thing can be traced back to the summer of '03, when I was thirteen and that lawn was just too big to mow, so I stayed inside and played Mario Kart, thus sparking my cursed love for video games, and the rest is history.

But, see, I'm not you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I _guess_ I ought to be grateful that I made me a chum and all, but, I mean—Really? When I finish my story, how 'bout you reflect upon it, add up all the wins and all the losses, see which one has more. The current score, in case you're wondering, is Wins: 1 Losses: 5. But, hey, people like to root for the underdog, no?

Anyway, anyway, anyway, the question (that was never posed) has gone unanswered: Why is it a bad thing that MASM didn't bother changing his pants?

It is a bad thing, duckie, because if he had changed them, say, in his apartment, the following situation could have been avoided:

"Damn, damn, damn! _Ross is going to be _(censored)_ furious!_" Paul cursed. _I knew I shouldn't have stopped__ off at Pam's to have my shirt dry-cleaned!_ Well, that's what he should have said. But, because Life's screenwriters never came back even after the Writer's Strike ended*, MASM said something that would not earn him a prerecorded studio laugh. But y'all know that _I_ get them laughs, eh? Eh?

"Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, pain, pain, pain, pain," I whined as the one who wears the (bigger) pants in this relationship bounded down some sort of ground-like terrain, giving no mind to the comfort of the stowaway in his pocket. Yup, in addition to keys, he put some jacks into his pocket. You can decide whether I'm joking or not.

The jerking ride suddenly stopped, and I heard MASM breathing heavily. _I hope that means we are at our destination._ Two raps were heard, and I assumed it was MASM using a lame secret knock. And I was spot-on. "Mm, hey. Whosit?" a deep voice grunted. There was probably one of those peepholes on the door, and all that could be seen were the man's eyes. Yeah, that's my guess.

"Tomash," MASM answered. _What? I guess his hobby is creating pseudonyms. But, Tomash? Honestly? That's not even Italian. How uncreative!_

The man at the door grunted again, and began unlocking all sixteen or so locks on the door. On top of all those locks, the door was probably titanium. No, it was probably some sort of titanium-steel-Kryptonite ore. Just to be safe.

MASM began walking again, and soon sat down. Then I got a little too claustrophobic. The pocket scrunched up, becoming tight. The fabric of pressed against me on all sides, his pocket hodgepodge coming at me from all angles. _No! No air! I need to get out! I need to get out! _I clawed vainly at the fabric above me. But if you know the definition of "vain" in the context in which it is used here, then you'll know that it didn't work.

_I need to get out here! I need air!_ I had to crawl out of the pocket. _Which way is up? Which way is out?_ It was nothing like getting disoriented in the water. In water, you can curl up in a ball and float to the top, but on land you have no such safety net. _Don't go into shock, don't go into __shock, don't go into shock._

A shot in the dark isn't always safest, but if you're on your last bullet and you need to hit your target, it's the only option. _Up. That way's up._ I reached my arms in the direction I thought would lead to safety, and did something like an army crawl out of there. I came to the thick hem of his pocket and momentarily panicked further, thinking I had gone the wrong way. Then I realized that I could go under the hem, and at last left his stuffy pocket. _Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I am free at last!*_

I blinked my eyes with the rapidity of a hummingbird's wings, adjusting my eyes to the bright light. MASM was slouched on a tacky zebra stripe couch, along with a big brawny man, devoid of a shirt, with a barely clothed girl under each arm. An... I wanna say "androgynous young man" was the only occupant of the couch to the side of this one. Standing behind that couch was a slick-looking slickster in a sharp white suit, his slick black hair slicked off to the side. Next to him was a wimpy-looking four eyes with over-long hair. A big man with ridiculous dreadlocks sat on the floor, his back against the foot rest of a recliner. A short mushroom head* in an orange suit stood near the door. _Interesting._

There weren't enough women for this to be a whore house, and the men were wearing too many clothes for that to be a possibility, anyway. There weren't enough snacks or leaflets for it to be an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. No instruments, so they couldn't be a band. No cameramen, so it wasn't a TV show. Well, taking into account the number of locks on the door and the fact that the door was made of metal, the only possibility left was drug cartel.

"So, Tomash, why you late again?" asked the shirtless wonder.

"Tina's crew wanted sushi," the man of one thousand names replied.

That answer seemed to satisfy the man with no shirt, whom I inferred was "Ross". But it did not satisfy me. _So this guy knows he's those punks' gop__her? MASM isn't a very bad-ass cartel member, I must say. And of course, I would be the one to get a ride with the least bad-ass person in the bad-ass organization._

"Eh, Mello, keep talking. Don't let Tomash 'ere shut you up with his intrusion," the mushroom head near the door shouted. Judging by his voice, he was the man who'd let MASM and myself inside. Whoa.

All eyes turned to the androgynous fellow on the next couch. _Hm, he looks familiar. And his name sounds familiar, too._ "Japan," he said. "We need some men to go to Japan."

"Why's dat?" asked one of the women, clutching Ross' arm.

"That's where Kira is," he explained. _I think he might've been back at the House with me! _The woman gasped and held on tighter to Ross' arm. Mello smirked. "And Kira's killing tool, naturally." He paused, making sure everyone's eyes were indeed fixated on him. "A notebook. If your name is written in it, you die." He took a bite out of a chocolate bar that materialized from no where. "So, we need the notebook."

"But how do we get the notebook?" inquired Mister Slickster.

"Yeah, we can't just go to Japan and ask at an information booth. 'Yo, Imma looking for this killer notebook, could you tell me where to find it?' Or is Kira's house gonna be on a map of celebrity's houses?" teased the dude with dreadlocks. _If this is guy I think it is, we're going to have one dead drug dealer on our hands._

Mello shot him a look, but grinned. "The Japanese police force has it." The group look around at one another and smiled. Evidently, taking things from the police was one of their specialties. Never mind the oddity in the fact that the police has Kira's killing tool.

"But we can't speak Japanese," the dreadlocks man pointed out. Wow, way to spoil the mood, dreadlocks man. Everyone was all excited, and then you have to go and be logical.

"Dat's what dey invented Google Translate for, honey!" cried one of the girls, laughing.

Mello waited for her to realize no one was laughing along with. Then he informed the group: "I speak Japanese."

"Ha, figures," snorted Ross. "Anything you can't do?"

Mello continued smiling. "And, you know, the quickest way to get something you want is a hostage."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. But why do the police have the notebook?" (I still haven't cured that pesky "spoke too soon" habit.) "I mean, Kira's killing people everyday. If the police have his notebook, how's he doing it?" Can you guess who said this? Why, yes, the man with the dreadlocks!

"There are two," Mello said bluntly. Oh.

"Oh," said dreadlocks man. Copycat.

"Ni—Damn, Tomash, you just can't stop interrupting, can you? First, you're late. Now, your phone's ringing! C'mon, man!" the slickster complained in response to the Nokia tune emanating from MASM's _other_ pocket.

"Sorry," said MASM sheepishly. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. I know, I know, for someone with as stylin' shoes as MASM, who'd have expected him to have something like a _flip phone_. I shook my head in disappointment at the man.

_"Speak,"_ said he. _"Yes. Yes. I don't c__azzo_*_ care! No, I can't. Go ask her! Of course it's possible. I don't think she'd like that, Angelo. Well, I can't be everywhere at once, you realize. Okay, how about a ba—What? No, I'm busy. I already told you, did I not? What? She's what? But, no, you do__n't understand! … Yes. Okay, fine, I will. Bye." _MASM folded his phone and looked meekly up at the group. "I need to go. Family emergency."

"Someone had better be dying," Ross warned.

MASM laughed nervously. "Hey, if I don't go, there'll be a massacre." _Uh-oh_, I thought, _he needs to go prevent a massacre. And I don't want to fall to meet my doom at the hard ground below us when he stands up, so I'd better... _I scrambled to the edge of his leg, jumping off of it and onto the tacky couch before he stood up. "Victory!" I cried. He stood up, walked to the door, and the mushroom head dutifully opened it for him, which was quite a task. The door slammed shut behind him.

"That damn Tomash," the slickster said in disgust once he was gone. "Always fucking around with us! Always late, never gives any input, always doing annoying little things, he can never get one thing fucking right!"

"Why don't we waste him, boss?" the wimpy-looking man asked, finally speaking up. "Or at least put him in a coma." How dare they speak of MASM in such a way!

"He's too valuable," Ross replied sternly to the two of them. "He takes care of Tina, any of you want to do that? Fool's scared shitless of me; he'll do whatever I want."

"Of course he's of value. Some fool can't just walk in off the street and be admitted to the Mafia," Mello added. What'd he just say? I believe it was somehow related to _the Mafia_?

"Oh, damn, oh, damn, oh, damn," I said. "Bad news, bad news, bad news." _Oh, wait, none of them knows I'm here. Right. _It's all good. For now.

**A/N: I am relieved that I can check everyone who reviewed, though! I am!**

**I am checking the Internet! I am thanking 7CrimsonKisses7, Diehard243, , TeamEdward225, tebrighteyes, shadow assassin101, JessiKa xoxo, bffs4evaMattandMell****o, and scrambled-eggs-at-midnight for reviewing every so greatly!**

**I am especially thanking Diehard243 for writing her own story, thus unknowingly motivating me to get this done! I am recommending her story!**

**I'm overusing exclamation points!**


	7. Chapter 7

All the people in the world, I say, can be effectively divided into two groups: the cannibals, and the non-cannibals. I prefer the non-cannibals, as I'm sure you do, too, so when someone tells me that they want to eat my flesh, I freak out a little. Wouldn't anybody?

"I want to eat his flesh!" dreadlocks man shouted in rage. This declaration was met with laughter. I guess not _everybody_ freaks out. Well, I don't know much about the Mafia, so this might have been an acceptable practice.

"Ha, ha, yeah, man. Way to get rid of the evidence," laughed the slickster, giving dreadlocks man a high five.

"And then I suppose you'll grind his bones to make your bread?" asked Ross sarcastically.

"Then I'll sell his organs on the Turkish black market!" dreadlocks man cried, pretending his thumb was a knife and making a slit across his belly to illustrate what one must do to remove organs.

"Bwahahahaha!" I cackled. "Oh, how positively malevolent!" Of course, no one could hear me. But I wanted to pretend I was a powerful member of an evil witch's gang, and cackling about cannibalism just seemed to fit.

"Yeah, I can just see you. 'Hey, hey, kid! You want American appendix? 50,000 dollars, kid, only 50,000,'" laughed one of the girls.

"It'd be an _Italian_ appendix, Trixie," commented the other girl.

"Pish, posh," Trixie said, waving her hand. "It works the same way. And you know they'll really wanna go for it if it's American."

"Why? You know everything good's made in China," replied the other girl, Trixie's clone. The two girls laughed, really quite amused with themselves.

"All this unrealistic talk of eating Tomash's flesh and selling his organs, I think needs to stop. What ought to happen is, he comes face to face with an accident," Mello suggested.

"Yeah. How'd we get rid of Rico?" the mushroom head asked.

"I'm still here!" shouted the slickster.

"Oops. You weren't supposed to hear that, then." The mushroom head grinned evilly.

"What? Really?" he turned, frightened, and stared at Ross. "Really?"

"Nah, man," Ross confirmed, "he's just playin'."

__"Oh. Okay, cool." Rico was clearly relieved.

You know, I somehow thought that Mafia dealings would be more terrifying. But, frankly, this was pathetic. Aside from the death threats, those guys could've been some old college buddies hanging out. However, I doubt any of those fools went to college.

_Well, this soap opera/sitcom isn't nearly entertaining enough, what with no background music or exaggerated sound effect__s. Time to pull a Rugrats_.

_"Pull a Rugrats? What in the world might that be?" _you ask. Someone clearly didn't watch enough "Rugrats" as a child. Rugrats, they always go exploring, Tommy has a billion and one useful little tools in that diaper of his. C'mon, remember that?__Well, what I meant by "pull a Rugrats" was "go exploring."

First came the challenge of _Where am I even going?_ I could crawl underneath the couch cushions... Or maybe not, after my little "episode" with claustrophobia. I could take a stroll on over to the bimbo closest to me... but I'm not enough of a pervert to do that. I could leave the couch and go... to the floor. And then... do other stuff! _Yeah, sounds like a plan._

Challenge 2: _How do I get off this couch without becoming Spiderman?_ There's the ever graceful jumping, but that can result in broken necks, and, ouch, that's no way to spend a lovely afternoon. "Oh! I could just use my—Darn it! Left the grappling hook at home!" I snapped my fingers. What a shame that was. _Disembodied voice, don't tell me that I'm going to have to shimmy down the seam. Damn it, why didn't that spider bite me back in that science mu__seum I've never been to? _Shimmying down couch seams? My day had been weird enough.

"Roddykins," Trixie pouted, turning her head towards Ross, "how come _she_ gets to feel your biceps?"

"Hey, you can, too, baby," Ross affirmed, flexing the arm he had wrapped around Trixie.

"What? That's no fair!" shouted Trixie II. "You told me that if I was a really good girl I would get a special treat." She, too, began to pout.

"Yeah, it's just-" Ross began, but was cut off by Trixie.

"It's just that he likes _me_ more!" she interjected.

"What? No he doesn't! He tells me every night, I'm the best!" the other girl snapped.

"You liar! You fucking whore, you must have brain damage to think that!"

"What did you say, bitch?" The girl leaped over Mr Biceps and slapped Trixie across the face.

"Oh, no fucking way!" Trixie jumped up, knocking the other girl over. Unfortunately for Trixie, though, Trixie II wasn't going down alone. She grabbed Trixie's shirt, pulling her down. It's a good thing the girls were underweight and likely anorexic because if they were any bigger they'd have hit their heads against the coffee table, knocking themselves out cold.

"You bitch! Ow!" shouted one girl, as the other yanked her hair.

"Skank!" shouted the other, receiving a sock in the stomach for her eloquence.

They rumbled and tumbled around on the floor, and the mushroom head, being the creep that he was, scooted up near the couch to get a better view.

There are two things I learned from this cat fight. Uno: The reason girls ain't never fighting over me is that I have buff hand muscles, while my biceps are... less impressive. Dos: Fate means business: it will hunt you down and force you to kill your father and sleep with your mother.

The girls' rumble rushed toward me, and flailing arms (or maybe just clawed fingers) threw me off the tacky couch. Hurtling towards the ground at a quintillion miles an hour, I spread my arms wide; perhaps I'd be able to fly. I flailed my limbs desperately, trying to grab something, _any_thing to keep me from becoming just another distasteful stain on an ugly rug.

Although free-falling wasn't something that had been an entirely foreign experience to me since Benta had her little hissy fit, there is a difference between now and then**. **Namely, back then I was falling of my own free will; now I was falling because Fate's a bitch.

Birds of a feather flock together, though, ain't that what they say? The eggheads with the eggheads, the ditzes with the ditzes, and the bitches with the bitches. Following that logic, it's only natural that as Fate pushed me off the couch, one of the girls' heads would lunge upwards, catching me before I found out if there's an afterlife.

Riding in the hair of an angry whore—likely intoxicated—is a lot like what I imagine riding a bull would be like. A lot of bucking and twisting and turning, and it's everything you can do just to hold on.

So, I slapped on my ten-gallon hat, made sure my spurs were shining, and "yee-haw"'d my way through that rodeo. If you were there, hiding behind the couch, studying me with some periscope/microphone contraption, then I'll bet you're spreading the rumor that I was screaming my head off like I was on a broken lifeboat in space or something, and that I looked ready to adopt bulimia as my hobby, but just remember: nobody likes a liar.

No great adventure can go on forever; otherwise it loses its excitement. So, I made up my mind and hopped off my ride. It was more of a tumble, actually. A _manly_ tumble. The kind of tumble that you only see in James Bond-type films.

"Stop it! Stop!" a shrill voice suddenly cried. Heads turned lazily to an unnoticed corner of the room to glare at a stick-man standing there with his hands in the air for dramatic effect.

The girls—now on top of the coffee table—abruptly ceased their cat fight to stare at the man as well.

"Why the fuck you care?" Trixie sneered.

"Why the fuck you talking?" chimed Trixie II.

The stick-man put a hand to his forehead, bringing the other to his hip. He looked like an impatient mother who wasn't even amused by the creativity of her children's excuses anymore. Stick-man sighed. "Well, because, we aren't being very productive, y'know? We should be discussing how to get our hands on the killer notebook. Tom leaves and everyone starts griping about him, and then the girls start fighting, and now no one's paying attention to the task at hand!"

The mushroom head rolled his eyes. "Yeesh, we're a-getting to it, okay? Don't get yer panties in a bunch." Something about this guy made me distrustful of him.

"Yo, Marty's right," Mello put in, raising a hand to tell the mushroom head to shut up. It was then that I noticed I was right next to his foot. _This could be bad_. I scurried quickly away from the shoe, putting a good nine centimeters between us."Fucking Tomash and the girls have distracted us." Stick-man nodded.

Several of the men in the room snickered, but didn't say anything. Trixie II put her hands on her hips and "hmph"'d in Mello's general direction, then crawled off the coffee table and back to Mr Biceps, quickly followed by her counterpart.

Mello ignored their immaturity, leaning back in his chair and waiting for the attention to be returned to him. "The first thing we'll need to do," he said, glancing at Ross, "is find out as much as we can about the Japanese police force. Specifically the branch located in Kanto, Tokyo. Find out who's investigating Kira, and who's in charge of that."

Ross pointed to the dreadlocks man. "You do that." The man nodded, repositioning himself on the ground. Ross cocked his head and squinted his eyes. "You do that _now,_" he clarified.

"O-oh, okay," the dreadlocks man replied, quickly standing and taking huge steps to the door.

"Fast," Mello ordered. The dreadlocks man nodded swiftly, flashing a gang sign before scurrying towards the door. As he left, he muttered:

"Damn, ain't it s'posed to be Ross that be the boss? Fucking bitch acting all high and mighty." He looked over his shoulder with a worried expression; perhaps Mello or Ross had heard him?

Mello's eyes were set straight on the man. The man froze, his hand hovering above the doorknob. A devilish smirk that seemed to fit Mello's effeminate features scarily well found its way onto his face. In the time it took for my body to take in air, detract vital oxygen from the conglomerate of gases, and release the waste products of the system, Mello had stood up and whipped a gun out from nowhere. It seemed to me to be nowhere, at least, since I couldn't very well see the bloke up in his monstrous chair.

Dreadlocks-man went pale, smiling shakily. "Heh, yo, man… Just joking, right?"

Mello nodded slowly, and the man sighed, gripping the doorknob. Before he had the chance to hasta la vista, though, Mello shouted, in a voice so loud it was practically mimicry of a foghorn, "BANG!"

I ain't never seen nobody jump out of his skin, but this bloke came the closest. He—involuntarily, I'm sure he'd say—let out an "eep" like a schoolgirl who almost sat on a frog. All the mafiosos laughed their heads off at their comrade's show of…a little less bravery than he'd had during his initiation, shall we say. Mello chuckled, and made to sit back down, but, having the brilliant realization that while he was up he could get a bar of chocolate, bent down onto all fours instead. He pulled a box out from under the table and sprung from it one glorious candy bar. He'd be back in three minutes for another one.

He looked down at his prize and smiled, setting the gun down to better admire his confection. If you look in his closet, you'll see a framed painting of Willy Wonka. The gun was so close to me that I could reach out and touch if I wanted—and that was with my puny arms! Too busy laughing at the pansy with the dreadlocks, who was now slinking out the door and at Mello's show of endearment towards the chocolate, I didn't really care where the gun was.

Until, of course, Mello snapped out of his daze, slid the gun across the floor, and had managed to scoop me up inside the barrel, too.

That was I knew my little conjecture about Fate was right on the money.

**A/N: …For the past year, all the characters have been in suspended animation. So, don't worry. **

**They're still alive.**

_**-ish.**_

**I'll let you mediate on that while I give my highest and deepest apologies for having absolutely no idea who's reviewed. Forgive me, I am not worthy!**


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